


This Is What It's Like

by purple_bookcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Illnesses, Minor Character Death, Pandemics, Sad Ending, this is seriously not a happy fic please mind the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23653234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: Ashe delivers a basket of food to the neighbors, who have fallen ill with a terrible disease.Then he gets sick.Very sick.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	This Is What It's Like

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, when I feel bad, I lean into that feeling. I don't know why. Maybe I find it cathartic to explore dark feelings to their depths. Maybe I'm just some kind of masochist. 
> 
> Either way, this fic is **not** gonna be for everyone. You already know what happens. You already know how this ends. You already know what inspired this fic at this time in human history.
> 
> This is **not** a happy story. 
> 
> **Please avoid it if you are not in a place where you think you can handle a very sad fic with detailed depictions of a pandemic.**

Mama set a wicker basket in his hands.

“Take this next door,” she said. “Leave it on the step. Don't go inside.” 

“Why, Mama?” Ashe said. 

“They are sick,” Mama said. “They need food, so we made them some. But it's dangerous to go inside. Do you understand?”

He nodded. Mama smiled, kissing his forehead.

“My good, sweet boy. Hurry, now. We still have the baking to do.” 

Ashe scampered away, the basket clutched in his arms. It was hard to see over it, but he knew the way by heart. The Duponts' house was only a few steps from theirs, connected by a dirt path worn into the ground by the passage of many feet. 

The rest of the hamlet was out and about, most heading toward the square at the center of the village, preparing to do their trading or selling or other chores for the day. Some shouted greetings at Ashe as he passed. 

“What'cha got there, boy?” Aadi, the town's herbalist, called. 

“A basket from Mama,” Ashe said. “It's for the Duponts.” 

“You be careful with that, Ashe,” Aadi said, his tone turning somber. “They've got an evil affliction, the poor souls.” 

“I will!” Ashe said. 

He squeezed past the gate hugging the Duponts’ house, skipping up the path through their garden. Some of the plants looked tired and gray, but the peppers were still hardy. A few had started to grow red and ripe. 

Ashe slowed as he approached the porch, taking the steps one at a time with the heavy basket cradled in his arms. 

Ashe set the basket near the door, pausing, listening. At first, he heard nothing, then he caught the rattle of a cough from somewhere within the house. 

He was backing away when a woman opened the door.

“Ashe?” she said. “Ashe Ubert?”

Her eyes were swollen and red; her hair stood askew. Ashe took another step back. 

She smiled, crouching down to his level. “I'm sorry if I frightened you. I heard someone out here and look what I found, a little mouse on my doorstep.” 

Ashe giggled. She liked calling him “little mouse,” liked rumpling his hair and sneaking him sweets. She was just about the nicest person Ashe had ever met, after Mama and Papa, of course. 

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“Mama sent me with a basket,” he said. “It's for you.”

She seemed to notice the basket for the first time. The kind smile on her face cracked like ice shattering and suddenly she looked horribly sad.

In an instant, she wrapped Ashe in her arms. He felt something wet on his shoulder. When she backed away to look him in the eyes, her whole face was damp. “Tell your mother thank you for me, OK? Will you do that?”

“Of course,” Ashe said.

She kissed his forehead. “Thank you, little mouse. Head on home now.” 

He wanted to hug her more, hug her until she stopped looking so terribly sad, but he did as he was told and slipped from her embrace, running toward home.

When he got back, Mama was looking for him.

“Did you deliver it?” she said.

“Yes, Mama,” Ashe said. “She says thank you.”

Mama's face went white like a sheet. “I told you not to go inside, Ashe.”

“I didn't,” he said. “She heard me and came out. She seemed so sad, Mama. She was crying.”

Mama crouched before Ashe, looking him over like she was searching for something dirty on him. 

“Did I do something bad, Mama?” 

“No,” she said, trying to smile. “No, Ashe. You didn't. Thank you for delivering that basket. Go wash so we can start the baking. Papa needs help with the dough, OK?” 

Ashe brightened. Kneading the dough was his absolute favorite part. “OK!” he said. But even as he scampered off he could not shake the worried look lingering in Mama's eyes.

#

Ashe was sick.

Very sick.

He lay in bed, sweating and shivering, coughs wracking his body. Papa sat at the bedside, dabbing at Ashe's forehead with damp rags, coaxing him to eat cooled soup and bits of bread. 

Sometimes, between bouts of coughing, Ashe slept. But this was even worse than being awake. Every time he closed his eyes, a demon stalked him through his dreams, yellow-brown like a bruise, festering and reeking, clawing after him. He never managed to outrun it before he startled awake. 

Once, he opened his eyes to find a figure all in yellow and brown in the room. He screamed until his throat felt raw and bloody. Mama and Papa had to hold him down as he thrashed and cried.

“It's only Aadi,” Papa said. “He's here to help you, Ashe. It's OK. It's OK, baby.”

Eventually, Ashe calmed. Aadi wore dirty yellow rags wrapped around his face. They made him look like a putrefied wound. He mashed up plants and spices and things Ashe had no names for. Then he smeared the paste on Ashe's forehead and chest and tongue and Ashe had had to swallow a bitter, foul taste like wet rot. 

Mama and Papa made Ashe eat the wet rot over and over, long after Aadi left. And, slowly, almost reluctantly, Ashe got better. 

His body didn't feel hot anymore. He didn't sweat all the time or thrash around in nightmares. He could eat without his stomach twisting into knots. He slept deeply and peacefully. Coughs counted the strange, stretched out time between dreams, but they were not his anymore.

And when he woke, truly woke, everything changed.

#

Ashe was alone on the day he felt well enough to get out of bed.

He slid out from under the sheets. The cool floor kissed his feet. He stood, testing legs he hadn’t truly used in so long.

Ashe crept out of the bedroom and found the rest of the home dark and quiet. The front door was locked up tight. The hearth where his parents made bread and cakes and sweets was cold.

But the room was not empty.

As he padded out, Ashe noticed two small lumps huddled on the floor swaddled in blankets, his little siblings curled up together on a makeshift mattress of pillows. 

Someone coughed. 

It wasn't Rowan or Fina. They slept on soundly. 

Ashe followed a second cough toward the other bedroom in the little house. When he opened the door, he saw Mama and Papa inside. 

Ashe started to run toward the bed where they lay. “Mama, Papa,” he said, “I'm all better. Wake up. Wa--” 

He smelled it before he saw it. A smell like wet rot. A smell like a yellow-brown bruise festering under the skin. 

He stepped to the bedside. Papa was closer, but they both lay there, sweating and coughing. 

Ashe reached out. Papa was warm to the touch. Ashe shook him a little.

“Papa,” he said. “Papa, I'm better now.” 

Papa did not respond.

#

The next day, Ashe went out. He had nothing with him but a couple coins he'd found in Mama's bag near the door.

The village looked deserted. Ashe followed the path of beaten dirt that wandered from the fringes of the settlement, where he and the Duponts lived, toward the little square where people met up and bought the things Mama and Papa baked and traded for coins or tools or vegetables. 

Today, it stood empty. Ashe paused, clutching the coins in his hands. No one sold at the stalls. The ground was smooth, not so much as a footprint or track from a wheelbarrow. A dog ate a scrap near the well and no one chased it off. It glared at Ashe when he paced through the square. 

As he gave up on finding food and turned for home, the smell hit him.

It wasn't wet rot this time. It was something deeper, more foul, more wretched. Something evil. A rot that had been given time to coalesce into something far more horrible. 

Ashe ran, covering his mouth, trying not to gag. He didn't stop until he made it back to the outskirts of the village. And there he saw it: a pit even farther outside the village, a big open hole. Beside it lay a body. 

Ashe wretched in earnest this time, but his empty stomach could produce nothing but thin, watery vomit as he hunched over, trying to forget that yellow smell hanging like a putrid cloud over the village.

#

Ashe cooked whatever they had left, but Papa had always started the fire. It was hard. Much harder than Ashe thought it would be. When he finally managed it, the soups he concocted were hardly more than water.

He fed Mama and Papa first, putting damp cloths on their foreheads as they had when he was sick. Then he fed Rowan and Fina. They were too young to know what was going on, too young to do much more than cry when they finished their soup and their bellies still felt hollow. 

Ashe ate last, if there was anything left. 

Finally, desperation drove him back outside. He did not go near the town or the awful pit beyond it, though. 

Instead, he went to the Duponts’ house. Ashe picked carefully through their garden, scanning the windows for movement, straining for any stray sound. Ashe crouched among a row of peppers. His belly ached, but he forced himself to remain still. 

No one moved. Nothing made a sound. 

Ashe plucked a pepper loose. Still, nothing.

He took another. And another. As many as he could carry in his pockets and arms. Each pepper was a broken promise, a stab driven into his thin chest. Each was a betrayal.

But they would not eat without them. Ashe swore he'd find coins or bread or something he could trade back some day. 

When he could carry no more, he turned away. And ran. Ashamed.

#

He took more things.

There were strawberries in a different garden, wild berries growing down by the river, potatoes in a basket behind the Duponts’ house. Once, he even found a home that was completely silent, the door slightly ajar. 

They ate well that week. A jar of preserves. A bag of carrots. Even a bit of meat. It smelled funny and Ashe had to cut parts of it away, but by the time it all went into a stew, it was passable. 

He gave little Rowan and Fina their bowls first. Then Ashe took food to Mama and Papa. They didn't respond when he entered the room. They didn't respond when he wiped the sweat from their foreheads. They barely even responded when he climbed into the bed and propped them up in his lap one at a time and fed them spoonfuls of broth. 

Papa's breath escaped in a thin wheeze as Ashe coaxed small sips of soup into his mouth. 

“Ashe.” 

Ashe startled. “Papa?”

“Ashe,” his father said. He mumbled something so faint that Ashe had to lean down close to his mouth to hear it. “Don't steal.” 

Ashe's throat suddenly felt tight. “I didn't, Papa,” he said. “Please eat.” 

Papa kept muttering, but Ashe no long heeded it, forcing spoonfuls of stew on him. He was still mumbling when Ashe gave up, collecting the remnants of the soup for himself and preparing to climb off the bed. 

As he slipped to the ground, he just barely caught the edge of his father's voice: 

“...good boy.”

#

Ashe gasped as he awoke.

His heart hammered in his ears, a sharp contrast to the still house around him. He couldn't remember the nightmare that had woken him, but it lingered at the edges of his mind like a stubborn fog clinging to the hillsides.

He crawled out of the bed he shared with Rowan and Fina and padded out of the room. Even indoors, he wrapped his arms around himself to ward off a chill. 

He often woke like this, afraid and alone, not quite understanding what had scared him. And when he did, he always checked first on his siblings and then on Mama and Papa.

Ashe tried not to let the door creak as he opened it. It squealed just at the end and he flinched, pausing. 

But Mama and Papa did not respond.

He tip toed through the dark, right up to the edge of the bed. 

They did not respond.

His heart stuttered, running around his chest like a frightened cat. He shook them, pinched them, called out for them.

They did not respond.

And then Ashe stopped. 

He stopped trying to wake them. He stopped calling for them. He stopped running back and forth to jostle one or the other.

He stood before the bed where Mama and Papa lay and he cried, and cried, and cried.

#

Eventually, the tears stopped. But even before that point, Ashe put on a coat and shoes.

His cheeks were still wet when he dragged Papa out of the house and through the grass and all the long, horrible way to the hole at the far, far edge of the village. 

Then he went back for Mama.

It took a long time. They were so much bigger than him. But, eventually, well before the sun rose to expose him, Ashe got Mama and Papa to the edge of the putrid pit that reeked of yellow rot. 

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I lied about stealing. I … I wasn't a good boy. I'm sorry.” 

Part of him hoped, then. Hoped they'd reprimand him. Hoped they’d tell him not to steal. Hoped they’d tell him they were going to get up and help him. 

They didn't. 

He pushed Mama and Papa into the hole. And then he went home. 

Tomorrow, he had to find something for Rowan and Fina to eat.

#

Here’s what it’s like:

Ashe wakes early, before the sun, before his siblings.  
He takes what he can from gardens, porches, homes, abandoned wagons, riverbeds, garbage heaps.  
He cooks. He feeds his siblings. He tells them stories.  
The village mends. Finds a version of normalcy, a version of life.  
Ashe starts taking what he can from pockets and purses, from unobserved bags and pitying hands.   
Sometimes he works, but this is less common.  
He cooks. He feeds his siblings. He tucks them into bed. He tells them stories.  
He sleeps in the room that belonged to Mama and Papa, tossing and turning as the ghosts of this home stalk his dreams.   
In the morning, he wakes early, before the sun, before his siblings.

**Author's Note:**

> I have wondered for a long time what a viable picture of Ashe's early life might look like. I hope I treated both him and the subject matter in general with care here. 
> 
> \--
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


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